Please excuse my grumbling again about this subject, but it continues
to annoy me.

A few weeks ago I stayed at the Chicago Hilton and brought back a
price list of the wines they were selling at one of its
restaurant/bars, Kitty O'Sheas. Here it is (no vintages listed):

Black Opal Chardonnay $33
Wolf Blass Riesling $38
Greg Norman Chardonnay $38
Black Opal Cabernet/Merlot Blend $33
Wolf Blass Shiraz $39

I was aware that Black Opal was usually an inexpensive product, but
thought that maybe wine prices in Illinois were out of whack, perhaps
due to post-prohibition taxation. So, I went to wine-searcher.com and
ran a search (pro version) for all of these wines, limiting the
location to Illinois (for non-US folk, that's the state in which
Chicago is located).

For each wine, I picked the *highest* listed price I could find for
the available vintages. Here are the results:

Black Opal Chardonnay $7
Wolf Blass Riesling $13
Greg Norman Chardonnay $13
Black Opal Cabernet/Merlot Blend $8
Wolf Blass Shiraz $10

I also called the restaurant and requested vintage information; a
return recorded message yielded the list below.

2003 Black Opal Chardonnay
2002 Wolf Blass Riesling
2002 Greg Norman Chardonnay
2002 Black Opal Cabernet/Merlot Blend
2001 Wolf Blass Shiraz

However, I question the reliability of the message, since, for
example, it looks like there is no such beast as a 2003 Black Opal
Chard (see http://www.beringerblass.com.au/brands/pdfs/225924.pdf).
Thus, I am sticking with the highest Illinois prices I could find for
purposes of the comparison above.

As you can see, the markups from conservative retail prices range from
2.9 times to 4.7 times.

The restauranteurs in the group will excuse me, but charging $33 for a
bottle of Black Opal Chardonnay, nearly 5 times a conservative retail
price, is ludicrous.

Note by the way, that the 2002 Greg Norman Chard is available at
Binnys Beverage depot in Skokie (Chicago area) for $11, so the
restaurant was marking up this product as much as 3.5X from a local
retail price. The 2001 Wolf Blass Shiraz is listed at Binnys and
Sam's Wines (right in Chicago) for $9, yielding a 4.3X markup.

Your thoughts please--and clicks, if you are so inclined, at the
RESTAURANT WINE MARKUP POLL,
http://home.earthlink.net/~leobueno/wine-markup.htm.


--
=================================================
Do you like wine? Do you live in South Florida?
Visit the MIAMI WINE TASTERS group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/miamiWINE
=================================================